d to give a fresh impetus to some impulse with which
Rigdon had been temporizing. He recurred to it at once. "You contemplate
giving it to the public," he said to Gordon; "why not try its effect on
a disinterested listener first, and judge from that?"

Gordon assented with an extreme gravity that surprised Geraldine; then
Rigdon hesitated, evidently scarcely knowing how to begin. He looked
vaguely at the moon riding high in the heavens above the long, broad
expanse of the Mississippi and the darkling forests on either hand.
Sometimes a shaft of light, a sudden luminous glister, betokened the
motion of the currents gliding in the sheen. "Last night," he said in
a tense, bated voice--"last night Mr. Gordon saw the phantom of Bogue
Holauba, Stop! Hush!"--for the girl had sprung half screaming from her
chair. "This is important." He laid his hand on her arm to detain her.
"We want you to help us!"

"Help you! Why, you scare me to death!" She had paused, but stood
trembling from head to foot.

"There is something explained in one of Mr. Keene's papers,--addressed
to Mr. Gordon; and we have been much startled by the coincidence of
his--his vision."

"Did he see--really----?" Geraldine had sunk back in her chair, her face
ghastly pale.

"Of course it must be some illusion," said Rigdon. "The effect of the
mist, perhaps----"

"Only, there was no mist," said Gordon.

"Perhaps a snag waving in the wind."

"Only, there was no wind."

"Perhaps a snag tossing in the motion of the water,--at all events,
you can't say there was no water." Dr. Rigdon glanced at Gordon with a
genial smile.

"Mighty little water for the Mississippi," Gordon sought to respond in
the same key.

"You know the record of these apparitions." Leaning forward, one arm on
his knee, the document in question in his hand, Rigdon looked up into
Geraldine's pale face. "In the old days there used to be a sort of
water-gypsy, with a queer little trading-boat that plied the region
of the bends--a queer little old man, too--Polish, I think, foreign
certainly--and the butt of all the wags alongshore, at the stores and
the wood-yards, the cotton-sheds and the wharf-boats. By some accident,
it was thought, the boat got away when he was befuddled with drink in a
wood-chopper's cabin--a stout, trig little craft it was! When he
found it was gone, he was wild, for although he saw it afloat at a
considerable distance down the Mississippi, it suddenly disappeared ne